Fighting Antisemitism w/ Adela Cojab

Adela Cojab is a legal advocate and media contributor recognized for her commitment to protecting Jewish rights and addressing antisemitism in academic institutions. Many in the Next Steps Forward audience will recognize her from the complaint she filed in 2019 against New York University (NYU) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for failing to protect its Jewish community from discrimination and harassment. Her case contributed to the Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism, laying the groundwork for subsequent cases. She joins program host Dr. Chris Meek to provide an account of her experiences at NYU and how they inspired her work to combat antisemitism, how young adults can move important conversation surrounding antisemitism and Israel on university campuses, how others can find effective ways to speak out against antisemitism and the importance of building bridges and making an impact both in and outside of Jewish communities.

 

About Adela Cojab: Adela Cojab Moadeb is a legal advocate and media contributor recognized for her commitment to protecting Jewish rights and addressing antisemitism in academic institutions. Adela is best known for filing a complaint against New York University (NYU) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in 2019 for failing to protect its Jewish community from discrimination and harassment. Her case contributed to the Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism, laying the groundwork for subsequent cases. Adela has served as a commentator on major networks like FOX News Channel, Telemundo, and Univision, and has consulted on multiple antisemitism cases. Her work, from political advocacy to interfaith peace rallies, has been recognized internationally. Adela is a legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, handling cases to protect Jewish Civil Rights. Adela formerly cohosted the interfaith podcast, Americanish: Daughters of Diaspora, and currently hosts OpenDor Media’s daily YouTube show, TodayUnpacked. Adela holds a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and B.A. from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, with a concentration in Middle Eastern Diaspora Structures.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
There are few things that make people successful.

(00:08):
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some
time to get there.
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.

(00:30):
Now here is Chris Meek.
Hello.
Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward, and I'm your host, Chris Meek.
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Next Steps Forward is committed to helping others achieve more than ever while experiencing
greater personal empowerment and well-being.
Our guest today is Adela Kohab.

(00:51):
Adela is a legal advocate and media contributor recognized for her commitment to protecting
Jewish rights and addressing anti-Semitism in economic institutions.
She's best known for filing a complaint against New York University in 2019 under Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for failing to protect its Jewish community from discrimination
and harassment.

(01:11):
Her case contributed to the executive order on combating anti-Semitism, laying the groundwork
for subsequent cases.
Adela has served as a commentator on major networks, including Fox, Telemundo, and Univision,
and has consulted on multiple anti-Semitism cases.
Her work, from political advocacy to interfaith peace rallies, has been recognized internationally.
Adela earned her bachelor's degree from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study and

(01:35):
her law degree from Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
She's a legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center handling cases to protect
Jewish civil rights, and she hosts Open Door Media's daily YouTube show, Today Unpacked.
Adela Khabab, welcome to Next Steps Forward.
Thank you so much, Chris.
I'm really happy to be here.
Again, pre-show, I mentioned I'm honored to have you here, and I actually saw you on Fox

(01:57):
a few months ago, and I said, I've got to have this person on the show, and so we're
going to dive right into it.
You've described followers of the Jewish faith as, quote, kind of perpetual wanderers throughout
history.
The description would certainly apply to your own family.
Take us on that long and fascinating journey of your ancestors and your immediate family.
Absolutely.
My family's originally from Syria and from Lebanon.

(02:20):
We are Sephardic Jews, but if you look actually genetically, we have no Sephardic, you know,
Spanish blood in us at all.
We are entirely Middle Eastern.
So on my dad's side, they were in Syria for generations upon generations, and on my mom's
side, they were in Syria and then Lebanon for generations.
On my dad's side, they went to Mexico, of all places, and that's where my father was

(02:43):
born.
And then my mom's side, they left Lebanon, went through Canada to get to Mexico, and
that's where my parents met.
So I was born in Mexico.
My family is pretty much spread around the world.
We are Syrian-Lebanese Jews, and I have family in, of course, Mexico, where I was born, but
also in Brazil, in Montreal, in Monaco, in London.
And it's kind of this story of Judaism, right?

(03:06):
If you look throughout history, it doesn't matter if your family, you know, was Jewish
in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, at some point, it became
dangerous to be a Jew, and we had to leave.
And because of that, I think that it really played into the Jewish psyche of the perpetual
wanderer, consistently being guests in host countries.
And then suddenly, when you reach that point of enlightenment, where you say, that's it,

(03:28):
we have equal rights, look at Germany, you know, pre-1930s, the Jews considered themselves
to be part of the fabric of that community.
And then, of course, it's just a matter of time until a host society realizes that there's
unwanted guests, if that's how they want to call it.
And that's the story of Jewish history.
Jewish history throughout has been a story of migration.
Now, of course, the story is different.

(03:50):
The existence of the State of Israel, not as a contingency plan for Jews to go to when
it's dangerous, but rather as an anchor of Jewish identity, allows Jews in the diaspora
to exist.
So right now, when becoming Jewish makes you different, and being different makes you a
target, instead of that only option of hide or run, we have the opportunity to actually

(04:11):
stand our ground, because it feels less existential.
It feels less, well, if not here, where, right?
I'm trying to think, everyone says, well, why Mexico?
You know, your family left Syria and Lebanon.
Why Mexico?
I wish I had an answer to that.
I asked my grandparents, I asked my great-grandparents before they passed, and they just said, well,
we had started setting up a community there.
A lot of men had gone there on business, so there happened to be some businessmen.

(04:33):
So when things got dangerous, it became a natural place, but that was never the plan.
The Syrian Jewish community never said, I wonder what Latin America is like, you know?
But here we are, and I'm actually coming at you right now live from Mexico City, in my
grandparents' home.
Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in.
We were talking again pre-show about the difference in temperature between Mexico City and the
tri-state area right now, and it's probably about 100 degree difference is my guess.

(04:55):
Yep.
I won't apologize.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Adela, what were your feelings, expectations, and impressions when you came to the United
States from Mexico, and what prompted you to choose NYU for your undergraduate studies?
That's a great question.
So my family, my immediate family, decided to leave Mexico after the attempted kidnapping
of my brother, which I know sounds very dramatic, but unfortunately here in Mexico, it was a

(05:18):
reality in the late 90s, early 2000s, there were just almost every week news of other
kidnappings.
Kidnappings were mainly to hold kids for ransom, and get the ransom money, you return them
back.
I know personally kids who were kidnapped, and they just sat in a living room eating
cereal, watching TV until their parents had enough funds to pay.

(05:38):
So that is the reality of second world countries and third world countries.
It's this lack of security, lack of safety.
So when we came to the States, originally it was because the Mexican government said,
we can't protect you, have you tried leaving?
Our solution for kidnapping was to just leave.
So my family planned to move to New Jersey for two, three years, and my mom shows up

(06:02):
and she sees the American dream.
I grew up in Deal, New Jersey, a small Jewish Syrian community on the Jersey shore, where
everyone rides their bicycle, people leave their cars running outside of 7-Eleven so
it doesn't get cold.
Completely different from what we were used to in Mexico in terms of security.
And she put my brother in football, she put me in cheerleading, and she said, this is

(06:24):
America and I love it.
So one thing led to another, my mom made the decision to stay, my dad did not.
My dad actually moved back to Mexico, my parents got divorced.
And I really was instilled with this idea of the American dream.
Now as to why I went to NYU, Syrian Jews aren't very education prone.
For the most part, we work for family businesses, women especially don't really pursue education.

(06:45):
But I was always different, maybe because my parents got divorced, and maybe because
my mom had four kids in a foreign country, no work experience, was engaged at 17, that
she told me, I should go to college and I should want an education and I should want
to work and have these opportunities that I have in the States.
And someone at NYU, someone did their job right, someone on NYU's PR team.

(07:08):
Because I got a pamphlet at some point that said, NYU is global and connected and worldly
and it's the school for leaders.
And I said, I'm global and connected and worldly and I'm meant to go to a school for leaders.
And from fourth grade on, NYU was always my dream, a school in and of the city, a school,
I actually, it's funny we say this, I, in my application essay, I ended it with saying

(07:32):
it would be an honor to attend a school as diverse as I am.
And you know, I don't want to spoil anything, but NYU ended up being very different from
what I expected.
I went to NYU undergraduate, but even before that I went to NYU's summer program.
I was a pre-college ambassador.
My brother went to NYU.
I loved NYU with every fiber of my being.
And if you would have told me, spoilers, that, you know, four years later after getting that

(07:57):
acceptance letter, I would be filing a lawsuit against NYU for anti-Semitism, I would have
told you, you were crazy.
I bled violet through and through.
Well, that's a great segue.
It's almost like you read the notes here.
How long was it before things began to change for the worse at NYU and what were the first
hints that things weren't the same?
So for my first two years at NYU, they were honestly wonderful.

(08:19):
They were great.
I was involved in the Jewish community.
I was president of the pro-Israel club, but at the same time I had a radio show on WNYU
radio.
I was on hall council.
I was on student government as a senator.
I, you know, branched out of the Jewish community to the point that I was in and of NYU's community
and everything was really great, but it was almost like a switch was flipped.

(08:42):
And it was in the spring of 2018, suddenly everything turned to Israel and Palestine.
And it all started with the mention of Zionism in the same category as racism and Nazism.
And it was a statement that was released by the minority student council.
And of course, as we know, no one reads student government emails except for me.

(09:02):
So I saw the statement and I reached out to what I thought were my friends who had been
doing great work with on student government.
And I said, Hey, you know, I saw the statement you put out, can we talk about it?
And they said, no, because we don't speak to fascists.
And that was the first time that my Zionism kept me from a space I was previously welcomed
in.
And it was, it was kind of this, this breaking point moment where we, we wrote a statement

(09:24):
we were going to release.
And I was called by a mentor who asked me if I wanted to start a campus war.
And I said, well, what do you mean by that?
And he said, well, who reads student government emails?
If you draw attention to this, you'll make it bigger.
And if you ignore it, I promise you it'll go away.
And I thought about it and it was my own decision against the wishes of my community.
But as the president of the Jewish community there, I made the decision not to publish.

(09:48):
And I truly did believe that if we ignored it, it would go away.
And we ignored it till this day.
It's my biggest regret because over the next three months, NYU became one of the most anti-Semitic
campuses in the United States because no, we didn't publish.
But over that semester, over the course of the next three months, we had two weeks after
that statement, a resolution on NYU student government against NYU Tel Aviv campus.

(10:10):
Two weeks later, a resolution by all academics, by 70 professors at NYU to boycott all Israeli
academics.
And then two weeks after that, we had a resolution by all student clubs, a pledge to boycott
not only Realize Israel, the pro-Israel club I was president of, but any club that would
partner with us.
So if you were a Jewish pro-Israel student on campus, as most Jewish students are, you

(10:32):
knew your student government was against you.
Your professor was boycotting Israeli academics and no club would work with you.
So it was this social isolation, academic isolation that just started hitting one week
after the other, after the other.
And at some point, I had to take a step back and say, how did we get here?
So this was your junior year all this happened?
It's my junior year.

(10:52):
So you're 20-ish?
Yes.
I was about 20 years old.
I mean, that's the weight of the world on your shoulders and the world that you thought
you knew crashing down on you.
When you spoke out, the NYU administration considered you to be a danger to other students.
Yes.
I mean, that to me seems like a living embodiment of George Orwell's 1984.

(11:13):
Did they share their rationale with you and did you have any allies, anyone on campus
who stood up for you?
Yeah.
So as everything was going down and things started progressing, we were leading up to
a big party we have for Israel Independence Day in Washington Square.
Basically, we rent out Washington Square Park.
We fly in a DJ, we give out food, we make this big block party open to everyone.

(11:35):
We had been doing this for three years in a row.
And it's usually a beautiful celebration, but that year I knew it would be different.
I reached out to the school.
I said, I'm worried for student safety.
I'd been meeting with administrators every single week.
Every administrator would send me to another administrator and I met with everyone.
We're talking Student Affairs, Center of Multicultural Education, Student Conduct, Student Safety.

(11:55):
I met with every single department.
And leading up to this event, I said, I really feel something big is coming and I'm scared
for the safety of my community.
And the school told me I was overreacting, that I was perceiving threats that did not
exist.
And lo and behold, the way that event kicked off was with an anti-Israel student coming
to the forefront, Israeli flag in hand, lighting it on fire, throwing it on the ground, and

(12:16):
other students about bragging that they threw gasoline on it to make the flames burn brighter.
Right later on, when we got to the end, when we sing Hatikvah, the Israeli anthem, another
student who I was in multiple classes with comes to the center of the circle, grabs the
microphone from the girl who was singing, starts yelling, free Palestine.
He gets surrounded by NYPD, gets brought out.
At that point, the protesters start closing in.

(12:37):
They start chanting, no Zionists, no Zionists at NYU.
We look up.
We realize that they took our other flags, tore them to shreds, hung them from trees
and lampposts.
This is Manhattan.
This is in the middle of New York.
I could tell you every Jewish student that was watching their flag burn and torn while
people chanted surrounding them felt afraid.
When I went to the school about this, they again told me I was overreacting.

(12:59):
They told me a line was crossed, but that any action they would take would be behind
the scenes.
Again, I made the decision to trust the school.
On a personal level, I was on student government.
I was boycotted out.
There were whole group chats dedicated to making fun of me.
People would even take pictures of me when they spotted me throughout campus and send
it to the group chat saying, spotted the Zionist, spotted the Zionist.
My professors in the Middle Eastern Studies Department told me to stop coming to class

(13:21):
exactly for what you said.
They said that my presence as a Zionist was a danger to other students.
All I did was exist.
I wasn't the one assaulting students.
I wasn't the one calling for the assault of students, but meanwhile, I was the one who
shouldn't have been allowed to go into my classes.
I actually had to take my final exams in a separate room, and there was one student who

(13:41):
agreed to work with me, ever refused to partner with me in my projects.
One student, uninvolved, not Jewish, agreed to partner with me, and she started being
boycotted too.
She was actually asked to take her final exams with me instead of the rest of the class.
The school's rationale actually was that if I stopped going to class, then they wouldn't
have to protect me, because at one point, NYU did send me to class with a security detail.

(14:04):
There was even one night that I had turned off my phone.
I went to the library.
I wanted to really work on my projects.
This is getting close to finals of my junior year, and at one point, I had school security
coming to find me in the library with my friends.
I was completely confused.
I had no idea what was going on.
Apparently, while my phone was off on Facebook, there was this whole entire post that exploded

(14:26):
about me.
Apparently, people were commenting the most disgusting things, saying that they would
do anything to see my head hit the gravel, really, really bad things coming from fellow
students to the point that my mom got nervous, because all this was public on Facebook.
My friends were nervous.
My friends and my mom are the ones that approach student safety.
They said, we can't get through to her.
Her phone's off.
She's not answering her calls.

(14:46):
There was this manhunt on campus to try to find me.
When I finally went to student government, my friends had to go, sorry, to student safety,
and they took me to the public safety office.
My friends had to come and pick me up and check me out.
It was insane.
It was insane.
There was clearly one group of students that was creating an unsafe campus environment,
and that group was not us.
But at the end of the day, we were the ones that were told, well, maybe if you didn't

(15:07):
exist as loudly or as proudly, you wouldn't have all of these issues, and it's the same
ingrained mentality of the wandering Jew.
Well, maybe if I had my identity, they won't hate me so much.
You couldn't have been the only Jewish person at NYU.
Why were you targeted?
Why were you the poster child of this hate and aggression?

(15:28):
You know what?
There's something we call self-ghettoization, right?
For communities that are like the Jewish community, that have gone through hate or cycles of expulsions,
migrations, we're very insular.
The reason why the Jewish community is successful is because we really care for our own.
All of my friends who did go to college, they really just found their friends in the Jewish
community.
They stayed in the Jewish dorm, and that was going to be their existence, and that was

(15:51):
the exact opposite of the outlook I had when I got to college.
I said, I want to be in and of NYU.
So the reason why I ended up taking the brunt of this is because I had stepped out of that
safe comfort bubble, right?
Because if I would not have been on student government, yes, they would still have the
BDS resolution, but I wouldn't have been the person who was standing up speaking against
it.
It probably would have just passed without any opposition, right?

(16:11):
So part of it was this internalized guilt, right?
I decided to study Middle Eastern politics.
I decided to join student government.
So did I bring this onto myself?
But then you take a step back and you realize, no, right?
I was an NYU student as much as anyone else.
I should have access to the same academic opportunities.
Someone even once told me from my Arabic class years later, they said that it was disgusting

(16:33):
to see the Zionist activists that I've become.
Did you only take Arabic to use their language against them?
And I replied, what a shame that you're so small minded.
I took Arabic so I could better communicate with my grandparents.
And it was one of those things that, you know, whatever experiences I had, it doesn't matter
if you try to be in and of the masses, right?
I'm Syrian, Lebanese, Mexican.

(16:55):
It doesn't matter what I am, what they saw was a Zionist.
And the irony of all this, for those who don't know New York City, about two dozen blocks
north is the United Nations.
Absolutely.
This is unbelievable.
I think I know the answer to this because I think you just gave it, but what was the
tipping point that made you decide to take legal action in general and file a title six

(17:16):
lawsuit specifically?
Because many people would think that was either unconventional approach or even a drastic
step.
So, actually, I, after the assault against the girls and the flag burnings and after
all of that, I decided to take a step back.
You know, I said, maybe I did bring this onto myself.
So I left the Middle Eastern Studies Department.

(17:37):
I left student government knowing full well that they would replace me with someone who
hated my people.
And they did.
And instead of taking classes in my major, which is what I should have been doing in
college, I took classes in creative writing and dance just to get enough credits to graduate.
I put all my classes on two days a week, showed up to campus, left campus right after.

(17:59):
I did not want to participate in NYU life.
And I stepped away from all my leadership roles.
And it wasn't until 2019, my senior year, spring semester, February, about three months
for my graduation, that NYU revealed the recipient of the President's Service Award, which is
the highest honor you can get as a group on campus.

(18:20):
And that year, one of the recipients was Students for Justice in Palestine.
And when I saw it, I honest to God thought it was hilarious.
I thought it was so funny.
And then friends started texting me about it.
And I said, yes, typical NYU giving awards to anti-Semites.
And another friend texted me.
And another friend texted me until a friend called me and said, what are you going to
do about it?
And I said to me, I gave three years of my life to this.

(18:42):
It's not my job anymore.
I ruined my entire academic experience.
I don't know what I'm going to do for work after college because working in any human
rights space I might be blacklisted from, I said, this isn't my job anymore.
I'm out of here in three months.
And it really took, you know, my friend asked me, well, can you at least get us a meeting
with the vice president of the school?
I'd been meeting with the vice president of the school every week for the year prior.

(19:05):
So I said, I'm sure I could get you a meeting.
It shouldn't be an issue.
And I was stonewalled.
Every time I called, they would send me to voicemail.
Finally one time the secretary picked up and without me even saying a word, she said, Adela,
he doesn't have time for you and hung up immediately.
And at that point, it felt personal.
It felt personal.
So I went to his office.
He refused to meet with me.
He finally scheduled a meeting for the week before my graduation in May.

(19:28):
And I said, it's February.
He said, yeah, May.
And that's kind of when I realized the school didn't want to make a change.
They didn't care about making a change, not in the years prior, not in the years to come.
And that's when I made the decision to get in touch with lawyers.
And I, you know, I called them.
I told them, you know, this is happening at NYU.
I gave them the lowdown.
And I asked if I had a case on.

(19:49):
They told me very clearly that I did not.
And I said, what do you mean?
And they said, well, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act does not include religious protections.
And Judaism is a faith-based religion.
So unfortunately, you're not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a race.
And therefore, you're not protected under the law.
I told them that I felt this case was different.
I asked if I could send them every document I had.

(20:12):
They said yes.
And they called me back within the day, after reviewing over 70 pages of documents I sent,
to tell me that not only did I have a case, but I had the strongest case they'd seen.
And they told me outright, they said, you will not win.
But this case could begin to move the needle.
It could be a foot in the door.
And it could potentially become a cornerstone in Jewish history in the United States, or
history for religious liberties protections.

(20:34):
And they asked me if I was ready to file.
And I called my mom and I said, I'm suing NYU for anti-Semitism.
She said, what does that mean?
I said, I have no idea.
I am 21 years old.
But it felt like it was something I needed to do as an NYU student.
I said, I can't imagine another NYU student going through what I went through over the
last four years.
So I made the decision to file.

(20:54):
How did you feel when they told you that what you're doing could be a cornerstone of American
Judaism history?
I mean, that's a big thing for a 21-year-old to be told.
It's a big thing.
It's a big thing.
I mean, they explained that they had other cases in the past, that each one moved the
needle a little bit more.
But the way that Title VI works is that you have to have discrimination, university knowledge

(21:16):
of discrimination, and then lack of action or actions that actually exacerbate the discrimination.
And with us, you had discrimination, university knowledge, discrimination, university knowledge,
flag burning, assault, battery, NYPD arrests, university knowledge, award, right?
It was just such a clear timeline that had this happened against any other group of people,

(21:37):
it would inherently be a Title VI violation, right?
Because we're talking, I'm Mexican, I'm not a US citizen, and I say this all the time.
You can burn a flag if you so desire as free speech.
It's legal.
You can.
But at the same time, you're at a university.
And if you would have burned a Mexican flag, not against Mexicans, but as a stance politically

(21:58):
against immigration, you're telling me your university isn't, you know, making a statement
about that, right?
And if you want to say the same thing, you know, a group of people, identity, I identify
as a Zionist.
If someone would have burned an LGBTQ pride flag, I doubt NYU is giving an award to the
group that burned it.
And if you want to take all identity and all politics out of it, I come from Greek life.

(22:19):
I was vice president of my sorority, if you could not tell by my frightly attitude.
Not president?
No, not president.
I was president of too many things.
I said I can only take on a VP role, please.
But I was vice president of my sorority.
And you know, if a fraternity burned the flag of another and then assaulted one of their
members and got arrested for it, I know for a fact that fraternity is getting kicked off

(22:42):
of campus and won't be allowed to recruit the next semester.
So why is it that when you burn a Jewish flag, an Israeli flag, you get an award, right?
It's not only not alarming, it's being celebrated.
And it's the only group I could think of.
Because in that moment, NYU was saying, want to know how to become an award winning group
at NYU?
You're going to pick a minority community.
You're going to assault their members, burn their flags, harass them for two years.

(23:05):
And if that group is Jewish, you'll receive an award.
I cannot imagine that happening from the other end.
And everyone always tells me, you know, well, well, what about, you know, Palestinian flags?
I'll be fully honest, I have never seen ever a Jewish student on a campus burn a Palestinian
flag. And if they did, I would be mortified.
I would be mortified and I would reach out to any affected student and say, that's not
the stance of my community.

(23:25):
We're sorry you had to go through this.
Please let us know how we can help.
Maybe I'd even invite them to do a unity Shabbat and uplift their voices.
But alas, you know, end of the day, when I see the NYU is because there were certain
conduct issues that were being not only allowed, but celebrated because of the politics
behind it.
But I was asking for equal treatment under the law.

(23:46):
I was asking for equal treatment when it comes to student conduct.
Again, if a fraternity burned a flag and assaulted a member, I know what would happen.
Same thing, social media. They said, well, we can't extend NYU policy to social media
posts, except if a fraternity posts alcohol, that fraternity gets suspended.
But when, you know, Students for Justice in Palestine post a picture of an assault rifle
with the quote revolt for you have nothing to lose but your chains.

(24:07):
And then the next day they go and revolt, quote unquote, and assault a Jewish girl and
burn an Israeli flag.
NYU has a social media policy.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Double standard.
Double standard.
So how did your case move to the court system?
And what practical effect did the legal decision have for Jewish students facing antisemitism?

(24:28):
So this is getting a little bit ahead because end of the day, when I filed,
the law did not protect us, right?
Title VI only protected nationality, ethnicity, and race.
And ultimately, you know, my lawyers told me your case will be a PR case.
It's going to move the needle in the PR direction.
Hopefully, maybe it'll have some sort of policy impact.
But that wasn't really the goal of my case.

(24:49):
The goal of my case is for the headlines to read, Jewish student sues NYU for antisemitism,
for me to speak at every single conference and for me to make it clear that the law is
deficient in protecting religious minorities, which is insane.
How can you have a law that protects discrimination against minorities,
but you choose which minorities are worthy of protections and which are not?
So that was the point of my case.

(25:11):
And I spent six months making as much publicity as I could
until one day I got a call from the White House.
It was 2019.
At the time, it was President Trump.
And they told me he heard about my case.
And he asked if I'd speak along his side at a conference in Miami.
And I agreed.
I decided to take the platform, which I'm happy to walk you through my thought process.
But I took the platform.
And three days after that conference, where I spoke about my lawsuit with arguably the

(25:34):
most powerful man in the world at the time, standing right behind me, uplifting my voice.
Three days later, he signed the executive order against antisemitism,
which officially expanded the definition of Judaism to include ethno-religious protections,
thereby falling under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
So legally, my case, when I sued, I had no teeth.

(25:55):
After the executive order, even though I filed my case before, NYU got nervous.
So when I sued, I didn't sue for any dollar amount.
I actually asked for $0 in damages.
The only thing I asked for was for policy change and for them to create a clear pathway
for, number one, defining antisemitism, and number two,
what to do when confronted with antisemitism in a school.

(26:17):
I don't think that administrators are antisemitic.
I think they're honestly lazy.
So if they see antisemitism and they say, well, I don't know what this is,
they can wash their hands.
Instead, we give them a definition.
If it matches the definition, great, that's antisemitism.
And then even if they could identify it, they say, okay, that's antisemitism,
but we have no policy when it comes to antisemitism.
All I asked for them was then to include antisemitism

(26:40):
as a form of discrimination under their existing discrimination policy,
which is really asking for the floor.
So NYU, after the executive order, after the national and international attention of my case,
they decided to settle.
And again, I settled for purely policy change.
Now, the issue is that we settled my case in 2020.

(27:01):
You know what happened in March of 2020?
Unfortunately, we hit COVID and we hit a pandemic and campus goes online.
So any change that NYU promised that they would implement, I noticed.
They didn't have to implement any policy change.
They didn't have to deal with any student protests or any pushback.
They didn't have to deal with anything.
So lo and behold, two years later, the observation period

(27:22):
from the Office of Civil Rights expires.
I petitioned the Office of Civil Rights at that point under a new administration
to extend the observation period to make sure NYU complies with the terms of my settlement.
And the Office of Civil Rights refused to do so.
So I actually didn't get to see a change at NYU almost at all when it came to my case.
But my case did set the groundwork for the way that Title VI would be treated post-October 7th.

(27:44):
That executive order that my case helped contribute to is the executive order
that students use to sue their schools for antisemitism after October 7th.
So it really became a full circle moment.
And the NYU case, because I had filed my case six years before,
they couldn't argue that they were not on notice that antisemitism
and protests were possible on their campus.

(28:05):
So NYU had to settle their case before any of the other cases settled.
And in their settlement, they had to include an explicit Zionism discrimination policy,
saying that you cannot use Zionist to keep yourself from discriminating against Jews.
You cannot have litmus tests for Zionists.
You cannot exclude Zionists from spaces on campus.
That is a huge victory.
And that's one victory building over another.

(28:26):
And that's the way that the law works.
Unfortunately, it's incremental.
I mean, this is a lot for a 20 and 21-year-old,
and 22 as you're going through the case, to deal with.
What was the most difficult part or moment of standing up against antisemitism at NYU?
I think there were a couple of very difficult moments.
First off, a lot of the time, I felt I was alone, even though I knew I wasn't.

(28:48):
I had the whole community by my side.
And the hard thing is that the community took a much harder stance than I did, right?
I continuously kept trusting the school to act,
and the school continuously kept falling short.
So on one hand, I felt like I was letting my community down,
and they were calling me a weak leader.
But on the other hand, I still felt that if I did anything, I'd be an alarmist, right?
So it was walking that line,

(29:11):
a feeling like everyone was behind me, but I was the one taking the brunt.
And another difficulty is also, you know, when you think about your future.
21, 22 years old, about to graduate from college.
If I file this case, and I'm public about it,
because the whole point was going to be the publicity,
what effect can that have on my future career?
And lo and behold, you know, when I applied for law schools,

(29:33):
I was waitlisted to all of the top 14,
except for two schools that outright rejected me.
One of them was Yale, which I understand is Yale.
The other one was NYU.
So Harvard, Cornell, UChicago, Columbia, they're all waitlisting me.
But NYU is saying that they don't want me.
So end of the day, Yeshiva University, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law,

(29:57):
saw me as an investment, not as a threat.
And they gave me a phenomenal scholarship.
And they also gave me the opportunity to pursue a law degree
without having to feel like I was fighting my administration every step of the way.
So I think that's one of the hardest things at NYU.
Of course, emotionally, it took a toll.
It really did take a toll.
I developed unhealthy habits, eating habits,
which were later exploited by the New York Post.

(30:20):
And they page-sixed me.
And that was not very fun.
But I actually had to take some time off my internship.
I was interning for Congressman Nadler.
And I had to take two weeks to go to a wellness center in South Carolina
because I, as a 21-year-old, was dealing with things
that a 21-year-old should not be dealing with.
So after everything you went through at NYU undergrad,

(30:41):
you decided to apply there for law school?
Absolutely.
And it was my number one choice.
It was my number one choice.
If I would have gotten into Harvard and NYU,
I would have gone to NYU hands down.
Hands down.
But I understand why they didn't accept me as my application essay
said something along the lines of,
I sued you.
Here's why.
Be better.
So I understand.

(31:02):
But it would have been a really great moment for NYU
to put their money where their mouth is and say,
you know what?
We were horrible.
How about we bring you in full circle?
Train me.
And in my essay, I said something along the lines of like,
please train me to be the advocate that NYU so deserves, right?
But they didn't see it that way.
And that's OK.
That's OK.
But yes, I did go to NYU.
And actually, fun fact, both of my sisters are currently students at NYU.

(31:25):
I have one sister there undergrad and another one doing their master's.
When both of them chose to apply, my mom just did not understand.
She sat down and she said, have you learned nothing?
And my sister said, I want to go to NYU.
And I looked at my mom and I said, I'm sorry.
But it's what they want.
I'm not making decisions for them.
What advice would you give to students facing anti-Semitism on campus today?

(31:46):
I, to students who are on campus today, first off,
I want to say I'm extremely impressed.
They're a lot stronger than I was.
You know, after October 7th, I got a ton of calls.
And most students asked me a series of two questions.
The first one was, do I hide my mug in David?
Do I take off my yarmulke?
And the second question they asked me was, how do I see my school?

(32:07):
And I saw these two sides of Jewish life fighting with each other.
These two Jewish questions battling, which is, do I hide my identity or do I stand my ground?
And they stood their ground.
I consulted with so many students who wanted to sue their schools, right?
Like after October 7th, it was just lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

(32:30):
When I sued NYU, I was one student against one school.
Right now, every school has a lawsuit.
And not only is it a lawsuit, every student, you know, plaintiff,
there's four or five, six plaintiffs per case.
Columbia has a class action, 140 plaintiffs.
That's amazing.
That's a generation who woke up.
And it's a shame it took October 7th for us to actually wake up.
But that was the inflection point.
October 7th said, do you want to be the Jew that hides?

(32:52):
Or do you want to be the Jew that stands up?
And this generation said that they're the Jews that stand up.
So if you're a student on campus today, I would say, first off, document everything.
No matter how small.
You're walking by your door and you see a protest, you take a picture.
You document absolutely everything.
You start a case with your school, with your Office of Student Conduct.
And you do not jump to legal action.

(33:13):
You actually approach the school by saying,
I feel safe at this school and I want to make sure it stays that way.
How about we ensure protections for Jewish students?
That's the advice I would get every single student.
Do not wait until they burn a flag on your campus for you to wake up.
Lay the groundwork.
Ask for the protections beforehand.
And you're not asking for any sort of special protection.
You're asking for equal protection under their existing policies.

(33:34):
That's the advice I would give.
Second, I would say that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Not me, but every student who decided to file their cases.
When I was on campus, the law did not exist to protect us.
It was not on the books.
You're starting already ahead.
You're starting way further ahead than I did.
You have a law that protects you.
Don't be afraid to use it.
When I sued NYU, I did it so no NYU student would go through what I went through.

(33:55):
I had no idea I'd have a national impact.
And now that national impact is something that every student has to feel.
You're a Jewish student on the campus.
You're protected.
You use your rights as a student.
You use your rights as an American.
Don't think that because you're Jewish or Zionist, you deserve less than the rights
that are provided to you.
First of all, I'm not sure how tall you are.
I can't tell from your screen here, but you are a giant in my eyes.

(34:16):
So I want to say that for the record.
You've mentioned October 7th a couple of times.
We all know what happened that day.
Anti-Semitism is the highest level it's been since Hitler.
And it seems like the gasoline on the fire was October 7th.
And then obviously your situation, what you went through was leading up to that.
But now there's a Wall Street Journal article, let me use your last week of the week before,

(34:38):
roughly 50% of the world is anti-Semitic.
First of all, that's disgusting.
And second of all, if you know the answer, and it's a very deep question, how and why
did we get here?
And maybe part two of that is, was October 7th that spark to ignite that?
Or is this something that's been percolating for years or decades?

(35:00):
And just someone obviously naive in terms of being Christian, not having to go through
this, I just want to get your insights on that.
Yeah, I think that this is always something that's been percolating.
I think that what we've seen about anti-Semitism is that it morphs and evolves into whatever
the hatred is of the time, right?
If you're in a communist society, the Jew is a capitalist.

(35:21):
If you're in a capitalist society, the Jew is a communist.
And it's just very easy to morph the Jew into the idea that you don't want them to be, right?
They're different from us.
That's how you scapegoat something and you turn it into a perpetual evolving target.
The issue is that there's only 16 million Jews in the world, which is a very small number
when you actually stop to think about it.

(35:43):
The example I always love to use, especially when I speak to college students, is that
if every single Jew in the world followed one Instagram account, from grandmothers to
babies, we would have 16 million followers, right?
A single Kardashian has at least 350 million followers.
I mean, if every Jew in the world followed one Instagram account, we wouldn't even have
10% of the following of one Kardashian.

(36:06):
That's a very small number, right?
So when you really look at it, it becomes kind of this idea where people say, well,
why is anti-Semitism so special?
In a way, it's not because when people want to hate, they hate.
But in a way, it is because it's something that really shouldn't live at the forefront
of anyone's minds, right?
Where 16 million people, why is 53% of the world anti-Semitic, right?

(36:27):
And then it gets into the anti-Semitic trope of, well, if you've been kicked out of 109
countries, maybe the problem's with you, not with the countries.
Sure.
Sure.
Maybe.
Whatever you want to say.
But at the end of the day, I think that the issue with Judaism is that we're too apologetic.
We're too apologetic.
A lot of people ask me, why are Jews failing at telling their story?
And I say it's because we haven't been telling our entire story, and we've actually been

(36:49):
stopping short.
We were oppressed.
We have gone through migrations.
My family in the Middle East, the Holocaust, we've come from all this.
But we're not victims.
We were victims, and we progressed, right?
We came to this country, and we said, how can we work our way up, and how can we build
ourselves as a community?
And we did.
We've been in the process of community building for generations and generations, because we've

(37:10):
been perpetual wanderers.
If you look at the Middle East, all the countries in the Middle East, quote unquote, were created
at the same time, right?
They were all created via treaty by the United Nations.
And if you look at the Middle East, they've all either become autocracies, or they're
falling into shambles, except for the state of Israel.
And the question is, why?
And it's because the Jews have been in the practice of community building for generations,
because that's what we've had to do.

(37:31):
It's something that's already been ingrained in us.
How do we get to a new place and start from scratch?
That's what we've been doing.
So I think that this has been lying dormant.
I think it's very easy to awaken a beast, and October 7th woke it up, right?
I always say October 7th was, it happened in Israel, right?
But in Gaza, the Gaza envelope, you felt the effects in Tel Aviv.
People were hiding the Nova Festival.
That happened in Israel.

(37:53):
But immediately after, immediately, October 8th, you saw protests in LA, you saw in New
York, you saw in Paris, you saw two Israeli tourists in Egypt walking around speaking
Hebrew that were shot point blank in the middle of broad daylight.
That became a global effect.
That's insane.
So October 7th happened in Israel, but it was felt everywhere.

(38:14):
And every Jew was hiding.
I was actually, I was in Dubai on October 7th, and I went to Turkey shortly after October
10th.
And when my friends were calling me, asking me if I was safe, I said, all I had to do
was hide my mug and speak Spanish and pretend I'm Catholic.
I'm doing fine.
I said, but end of the day, day of rage is coming this Friday.
I'm going to be in Turkey.
I know I'll be safe because I'm going to stay in my hotel room.
Are you safe in New York?

(38:36):
That became a scary point.
But I was telling my friends in New York, hey, Friday, don't go outside.
And I suddenly felt safer in Turkey than in New York.
That's insanity.
It's insanity.
And I wish I had a solution.
I really don't.
Whenever I speak to Jewish people, I tell them that the only solution is education and
existing as in and of the society.
You know, it's very easy to hate something that you do not know anything about.

(38:58):
It's easy to hate something that you don't know.
So if you present yourself as a Jew, as a practicing Jew in every space you enter, don't
check your identity at the door, as we love to say, then maybe that's the way for people
to say, well, at least I have one Jewish friend, because maybe otherwise they wouldn't.
I'm still trying to comprehend all this.
This is just a lot for a middle-aged, 54-year-old guy to digest.

(39:22):
I've been struck by something you said about the prevailing attitude on college campuses.
Speaking about many of your peers, you said, quote, we're getting to the point where no
one does the work.
Gen Z will fight you on the meaning of a book that they didn't even read.
Everything is soundbites.
Everything is summaries.
Everything is chat GPT-AI to the point that no one's actually learning or critical thinking.
Where did that attitude come from?

(39:42):
And more importantly, how do we fix it?
So I see it in a fun tongue-in-cheek way with my two younger sisters, who are very different.
They're two very different sides of Gen Z.
One is very left-leaning.
She's scared of her own shadow.
She is all about communication and love and rainbows and globalism.
That's her.
My other younger sister is the other side of Gen Z, which is the attitude, the one who

(40:05):
will fight you.
She happens to lean conservative.
But looking at both of them, both of them, I hate to say, don't really put in the work.
They won't really look to understand something.
And I think it's because it's very easy when you have an easier way out.
So just from conversations with my sisters and their friends and just seeing how everything's
a snap judgment, I say, well, how did we get here?

(40:27):
And then you look at college and you realize that they're not actually teaching you to
think.
They're teaching you to regurgitate and take it one step further.
So for example, if you read an essay about how women are oppressed, the essay you have
to write is about how women have always been oppressed, right?
So everything is just taking it one step further, one step further.
And that's what academia likes to see.

(40:49):
They like to see extremism.
They like to see that they bring in some students.
For example, I took a class in Latin American modernities, right?
And it was all about how Latin America was shaped by the years of turmoil and postcolonialism.
True.
Yes, absolutely.
But then every essay that we were asked to write was essentially writing about how women
were oppressed.

(41:09):
It was essentially writing about how all those effects are still being felt today.
And that's the reason for, and then essentially pick an ill in society and blame it on colonialism.
I took a personal essay class, personal essay called The Art of Personal Essay.
And the final essay we had to write was called The Political is Personal.
And it was all about personalizing politics and essentially placing yourself in a victimhood

(41:33):
narrative.
I think that academia is training students to write themselves into history as victims
without actually understanding what the world looks like.
And that's just something I've been seeing.
And I know that we're going to get more into the academia issue, but I think that right
now everything is soundbites.
And I think that students are so afraid of not fitting in.

(41:54):
Like even you see this, for example, with anti-Zionist Jews.
People always ask me the anti-Zionist Jewish question.
They always say, well, what do you do about anti-Zionist Jews?
And I'm very clear with them.
Have you spoken to an anti-Zionist Jew?
Have you seen them?
For the most part, they're people who are already disenfranchised.
I see anti-Zionist Jews as a failure of the Jewish community to be accepting.
And suddenly you show up into a world where all you have to do is say you hate Israel

(42:15):
and you're going to be propped up on a pedestal.
It's the only thing you need to do.
And most of the people who are falling into the free Palestine camp and were chanting
death to America are people who are disenfranchised, but shouldn't have been, right?
Because they're safe in America and they have no qualms in the world.
But they're being told that the only way to be valid is to be oppressed.

(42:36):
So they have to find a way to either become oppressed or show so much grandstanding that
they're standing against the oppression that they're part of the system.
And this is a long time coming.
It's something that we see in our social media.
It's something that we see in our education system.
And it's something that we saw, unfortunately, play out post-October 7th.
I actually use October 7th as an inflection moment, not for Jews when it comes to anti-Semitism,
but for the West, for when it comes to the ideologies that we've been allowing

(42:59):
to seep into our education system.
You mentioned a moment ago, you speak often to groups of college and high school students.
I've heard college students who are conservative say that they've actually written papers that
are completely the opposite of what they believe to appease liberal professors,
avoid the anger of classmates, and avoid getting a bad grade in class.
Have you heard the same thing?
Does that really happen?

(43:20):
Absolutely.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Every single step of the way.
And for me, I felt it a lot with the Israel side because I was a Middle Eastern studies
major, but conservative students cannot speak freely on campuses at all.
Actually, I love to talk about my Middle Eastern studies class.
I took a modern Middle East class, and I looked at the syllabus, and I saw the last two weeks
were Israel and Palestine.

(43:41):
And I said, great, I'm going to become public enemy number one, at least at the end of the
semester, right?
But here's the thing.
I did not have to wait until the last two weeks of the semester, because week number
three, we did a unit on Osama Bin Laden and 9-11.
And the readings that we had were called the Jihadists Next Door.
And essentially, we're making the case for why Osama Bin Laden was a freedom fighter
who was actually using religion to mobilize the masses to fight for social justice.

(44:04):
And I read this at home, and I said, but he was a terrorist, right?
So I said, surely, I will get to class, and they will talk about how dangerous it is when
people mobilize the masses using religious ideology for terror.
And instead, my professor just sat there and essentially praised Osama Bin Laden.

(44:25):
And again, like we said, NYU, yes, it's right near the United Nations, but it's also less
than 50 blocks from One World Trade.
So I sat there in class, honest to God, confused.
And I, honest to God, raised my hand to ask an honest to God question.
And I said, but he's a terrorist, right?
And at this point, my classmates started scoffing.

(44:45):
My professor crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, and he said, I'm sure some would call
him that.
And at that point, I outed myself as a crazy conservative in class, which is insane, because
all I did was ask whether Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist.
And that's when I said, it doesn't matter about the Israel-Palestine unit.
That is the least of my problems.
This is the class that I'm in.

(45:06):
For that class, want to know how I got around to writing my final paper requirement?
Instead of actually writing about something of substance, I wrote something called an
interview with a Likudist.
And I wrote a mock interview with someone from the Likud party in Israel, which for
those who aren't familiar is the right-wing party that's currently in power.
And that way, they couldn't give me a bad grade, because I wrote a paper that was an

(45:27):
interview with a Likudist.
Because what else were you supposed to do?
But I wasn't always, I hate to say, I wasn't always this person, right?
For my first two years at NYU, I really did drink the Kool-Aid.
I took a class, and it was all about regimes of truth and how we create realities for
ourselves and how the government is controlling all of us, essentially, something like that.

(45:47):
And it was a Middle Eastern studies class.
It was based on Turkey and Erdogan, et cetera.
And for my final paper, I wrote an essay using Michel Foucault's regime of truth, about
how the Syrian Jewish community controls the welfare system, the education system, the
religious institutions, and essentially is its own regime of truth that keeps women in
a downtrodden state.

(46:08):
And I wrote this paper, and I was proud of it, and my teacher loved it.
And she said, I'd love to publish this, maybe on one of NYU's journals.
And I said, oh my gosh, I would be honored.
I call my mom.
I tell her, mom, they want to publish my paper.
She says, oh my God, that's amazing.
What's it about?
I said, the Syrian Jewish community.
She said, wow, I'd love to read it.
And I said, no.
I said, no.

(46:29):
And then I realized I had this moment of cognitive dissonance.
How did I write a paper I'm so proud of in one setting and I'm so ashamed of in another
that I can't even have my mother read?
Oh, because I'm being taught something against my own existence.
I've never been oppressed as a woman.
I grew up in a community where women might have not had certain opportunities, or maybe
they didn't push us to.
I would never use the word oppression.
I come from Mexico, Syria, and Lebanon, where women literally do not have rights.

(46:53):
And I have the audacity to say I was oppressed because I grew up in Deal, New Jersey.
What is this?
And that was kind of that moment that I said, how did I get to this point?
And after that, I started seeing it in everything.
In every single class I took, I realized that everything was pushing towards something.
Personal essay, political is personal, right?
Everything was pushing you to this narrative of woe is me.

(47:15):
I'm part of a system that downtrods women, downtrods minorities.
And if I don't acknowledge that I'm part of the system or any benefit I might potentially
reap, then I am part of the problem.
So yes, conservative students very much have to keep their head down and write the paper
that gets them an A, because as soon as you speak up, you're going to have consequences
and the consequences might not look so pretty.
What I tell students is that they're going to have that moment.

(47:37):
I said, I guarantee you'll have that moment.
And I'm asking them to stand up.
I think that right now we're also at an inflection point where the institutions that used to
hold so much weight in our minds, you know, the Harvard, MIT's, Columbia's of the world,
we're taking a step back and seeing this institution as a joke, right?
After Trump's election, the second term around, the first term as well, first term, they canceled

(47:57):
classes at NYU and they had wellness sessions.
Here the second time around, someone sent me an email from Columbia and from Harvard
and they were giving out mental health cookies and giving out mental health days and wellness
circles.
How are the high and mighty among us?
How are the most intelligent among us?
We're going to be the leaders of tomorrow sitting on our Supreme courts and in our Congress,
in our executive boards for all of our major corporations.

(48:20):
How do they need a mental health cookie after an election?
Who are we raising?
What are we raising them to become?
So I think that people are starting to realize then that the new class of Ivy Leagues, the
new class of elite institutions are those that actually have been focusing on education
through and through.
And those are the schools, I hate to say it, the schools of the South.
Those are the UT Austin's, that's the University of Florida's.
Those are the institutions that have not caved into privileging activism over academics.

(48:47):
Couldn't have said it better than myself.
I want to go back to what you touched on regarding sympathy for Osama Bin Laden.
So around that same time of your class, there was also a report done by Pew Research, which
is a very reputable nonpartisan think tank.
And same thing, it was one in five Gen Zers ages 18 to 29 had a sympathetic or a positive

(49:10):
view towards Osama Bin Laden.
Now my viewers and listeners know that I was at ground zero on 9-11.
It took me 17 years to go back, even though I worked three blocks from there, self-diagnosed
myself with PTSD.
And you're going to tell me you have sympathy for somebody that killed 2,977 people that
day and thousands of lives after that.
For lack of a better word, that's disgusting.

(49:32):
I appreciate you raising that.
I cannot believe somebody at NYU said that to your point, just north of ground zero.
And part of my French were satellite, not cable.
So I can say that's bullshit.
So I'm glad you raised that point and made it on air as well.
Let's talk about the plight of the people of Gaza.
What do you feel for the citizens, excuse me, civilians of the Gaza Strip?

(49:54):
And what's the solution for them to rebuild their lives and live in peace?
Absolutely.
My heart entirely breaks.
My heart breaks.
And every night I pray for the people of Gaza.
Every night.
And by the way, that's the difference between one side and the other.
Because when they see pictures of Israelis who were murdered, they say, we'll do it again

(50:14):
and again and again.
And every day will be October 8th, because every day is a day after October 7th.
When you speak to anyone on our side, we pray for the Palestinians to have a leadership
that puts their people first before they are ideology.
And that's what I say always.
Always, always.
I pray for the people of Gaza.
May God send them a leader who rises and starts standing up for their rights to live as humans

(50:37):
on this planet instead of fighting for an ideological war that they will never win.
Whenever I speak to people who tell me, you know, well, you know, the Israelis are this
and that, I actually spoke about this with, I don't know if you're familiar with, his
name just escaped me.
I had it in my head just now.

(50:57):
But either way, what I always say is if you had the keys to the world, if the United Nations,
the United States, Israel, the Palestinians, if everyone came to the table and said, I'm
going to give you the keys to the world.
What is your solution?
What are you crafting?
They'll hit one of two pathways.
The first one is a one state solution.
And you say, great, a one state solution.

(51:19):
Like everything becomes Palestine, sure.
What happens to the Jews that live in the country?
And they say, well, they can become equal citizens.
And you say, great.
And they become Palestinian.
Yes, sure.
You say, OK, great.
What if we called that country Israel and all the Palestinians accepted Israeli citizenship
and suddenly it becomes a different question?
No, God forbid.
Sure.
The second answer that they'll get to is a two state solution, right?

(51:40):
And the two state solution, you say, OK, great, great.
There's been six two state solutions that have been proposed in the future.
Sorry, in the past.
Where do we go from here?
Two state solution.
And I ask them, tell me what that two state solution looks like.
And usually they'll say something like a secular democratic state, right?
A secular democratic state, either one state or two state.

(52:03):
But it becomes a secular democratic state.
And I say, great, guess what?
If you approached Israelis and you say for your safety and security, you will live in
a secular democratic state.
Nine out of ten will say yes.
Nine out of ten will say absolutely yes.
But if you approach Hamas and you say, hey, guess what, Hamas?
I solved the conflict for you.
And here's the solution I came up with.

(52:23):
You're going to live in a secular democratic state.
Hamas will spit in your face because Hamas is not fighting for a secular democratic state.
They're not fighting for anyone to live as equals under one roof.
That is not what they're fighting for.
That's not what they've ever fought for.
They say from the river to the sea, they say we don't want no 48.
We want all of it.
That's what they've been chanting from the beginning.
We did not ask for October 7th.

(52:44):
Actually, if you ask all Israelis, we would prefer it have not happened.
We in no way are celebrating October 7th.
The only side that's still celebrating it as a victory, even though they're lying in rubble,
is Hamas, right?
When your victory looks the way that Gaza looks today, that's not victory.
That's not.
So you really have to take a step back and say, who am I fighting for?

(53:05):
When my views of a secular democratic state don't align with the party that I supposedly
support, Hamas, right?
You ask college students, you say, hey, secular democratic state, you support that?
College students will say yes.
You say, you know, Hamas doesn't.
They can't fathom that.
They can't wrap their head around it.
They can't.
So where do I see the path here for the civilians in Gaza?
I honestly don't know.

(53:25):
I honestly don't know.
I think that they're tired.
I think that there's fighting reports.
Whenever I speak to people, half of them say, well, did you know that the majority of Gazans
don't support Hamas and they just want to rebuild?
And then other people tell me, did you know that the majority of Gazans are still celebrating
October 7th as if it was yesterday?
I don't know.
I'm not on the ground.
But what I can tell you is that what happens is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy that could

(53:46):
have ended had Hamas returned the hostages on October 9th or 10th or 11th or 12th.
And that's the reality.
Whenever people said ceasefire now, I say, absolutely.
And as part of that, you have to return all hostages.
Hostages and ceasefire, that's something I could get behind.
But unfortunately, that's not how they see it.
Dela Cohab, thank you so much for being with us today.
It was an absolute pleasure and honor.
I really appreciate your time and your insights.

(54:07):
Absolutely.
Thank you.
I'm Chris Meek.
We're out of time.
We'll see you next week.
Same time, same place.
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time

(54:28):
and 1 p.m. Eastern Time on The Voice America Empowerment Channel.
This week, make things happen in your life.